One fundamental principle of a free and democratic society is that the citizenry have certain duties toward said society. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. A citizenry must be vigilant against its own government becoming tyrannical. The price of freedom can only be paid by a citizenry that is 1) educated 2) informed and 3) empowered.

If a citizenry does not have a free and open press... if news and information is not accurate and poignant, then you do not have a citizenry capable of paying the price of freedom. You do not have a people who knows what is going on. The fall out from this failure is always tyranny. Tyranny is a wolf that constantly circles the village. It is always there at the edge of society waiting for a weakness in the defenses.

It is no accident that the three pillars (education, information and empowerment) have been systematically attacked over the last few decades. There is a reason our schools suck. There is a reason that public protesting is treated as terrorism and the voting machines have back doors. There is a reason the news media is propagandized.

ONLY an educated, informed and empowered citizenry can pay the price of freedom.

If you restore these three fundamentals... these pillars... then the people will be capable of dealing with anything. The people will be able to solve any and all social, economic and spiritual issues that pop up.

Good points Hillary. The loss of freedom is a keynote point that somehow is ignored by the masses. While the government takes away our freedoms they at the same time make a point out of stating that the "others" are jealous of our freedoms liberty and way of life. It is a smoke screen and mirrors illusion that reminds us that we are dumbed down beyond belief and all of us children have purposely been left behind. Either you're with them and believe that you are free, or you're against them taking freedom away from us- and this is what they are against. Freedom to think freely, to educate freely and to espouse the power of the people to be free from their tyranny.

We should seek to remove all controls, all filters, all cultural conditioning from perceptions and to confront Nature- or the World or Reality first-hand - in its unpasteurized, unedited, unretouched, infinite rawness.

Those bonds are much harder to break today. We are the most conditioned, programmed beings the world has ever known. Not only are our thoughts and attitudes continually being shaped and molded; our very awareness of the whole design seems like it is being subtly and inexorably erased. The doors of our perception are carefully and precisely regulated. Who cares, right?

It is an exhausting and endless task to keep explaining to people how most issues of conventional wisdom are scientifically implanted in the public consciousness by a thousand media clips per day. Once the basic principles are illustrated about how our current system of media control arose historically, the reader might be more apt to question any given popular opinion.

In America, conventional wisdom that has mass acceptance is usually contrived: somebody paid for it.

They trace modern public influence back to the early part of the last century, highlighting the work of guys like Edward L. Bernays, the Father of Spin. From his own amazing chronicle Propaganda, we learn how Edward L. Bernays took the ideas of his famous uncle Sigmund Freud himself and applied them to the emerging science of mass persuasion. The only difference was that instead of using these principles to uncover hidden themes in the human unconscious, the way Freudian psychology does, Bernays used these same ideas to mask agendas and to create illusions that deceive and misrepresent, for marketing purposes.

As a neophyte with the Committee on Public Information, one of Bernays' first assignments was to help sell the First World War to the American public with the idea to "Make the World Safe for Democracy."

Bernay's job was to reframe an issue; to create a desired image that would put a particular product or concept in a desirable light. Bernays described the public as a 'herd that needed to be led.' And this herdlike thinking makes people "susceptible to leadership." Bernays never deviated from his fundamental axiom to "control the masses without their knowing it." The best PR happens with the people unaware that they are being manipulated.

Stauber describes Bernays' rationale like this: "the scientific manipulation of public opinion was necessary to overcome chaos and conflict in a democratic society."

These early mass persuaders postured themselves as performing a moral service for humanity in general - democracy was too good for people; they needed to be told what to think, because they were incapable of rational thought by themselves. Here's a paragraph from Bernays' Propaganda: "Those who manipulate the unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. In almost every act of our lives whether in the sphere of politics or business in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind."

A tad different from Thomas Jefferson's view on the subject:
"I know of no safe depository of the ultimate power of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise that control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not take it from them, but to inform their discretion."

Inform their discretion. Bernays believed that only a few possessed the necessary insight into the Big Picture to be entrusted with this sacred task. And luckily, he saw himself as one of that few.

You might like this link also - STOLEN ELECTIONS
"The Right will steal the next one too - unless we stop them."
Professor Mark Crispin Miller, NYU
http://www.tucradio.org/new.html

Go down the list of programs and click HERE on Parts 1 &2.

Mark Crispin Miller writes in his book, Fooled Again, that both the 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen. Miller presents massive documentation, backed by 56 pages of notes, of how this was done. In this talk he describes the mindset of both the major parties and the media that allowed the theft to happen and go unchallenged, and why and how the Right will steal the next election too.

Miller says that talking about particular candidates, crafting a message, getting out the vote etc. are all crucial but there is a big “if”: We no longer have the right to assume that we can have a fair election.

We need to reclaim America and insure ourselves the right to vote, he says, otherwise this experiment in democracy is finished. Most importantly, the installation of voting machines in state after state needs to be stopped.

Mark Crispin Miller is professor of media studies at New York University and the author of the book: Fooled Again, How the Right Stole the 2004 Elections.

_________________Completely sane world
madness the only freedom

An ability to see both sides of a question
one of the marks of a mature mind